Psychic who charged R42m for exorcism jailed for tax evasion

Boston - A self-proclaimed psychic was
sentenced on Wednesday to 26 months in prison after admitting
that she tried to avoid paying taxes on over $3.5 million (R42.6 million) that
she received from an elderly Massachusetts woman seeking to
cleanse herself of demons.

Sally Ann Johnson, 41, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge
Denise Casper in Boston, who said the evidence suggested the
psychic took advantage of the Martha's Vineyard resident as the
woman began to suffer from dementia.

"There is a strong inference of fraud here," Casper said.

She ordered Johnson to repay the woman nearly $3.57 million
she received from 2007 to 2014 and to pay $725,912 in
restitution to the U.S. government for the taxes she avoided
paying.

Johnson, who never passed the second grade and calls herself
a Romani "spiritual consultant," pleaded guilty in October to
trying to impede the administration of tax laws. In court, she
apologized for that conduct.

But Johnson denied that she took advantage of anyone. Her
attorneys called the elderly woman intelligent if not eccentric
and fully competent when she employed Johnson.

"I am not somebody who would do wrong to anybody," Johnson
said.

Court papers refer to the woman only as "V.P." and say she
attended Radcliffe College and Harvard University, was
independently wealthy and was more than 70 years old in 2007.
She is a resident of Martha's Vineyard, a favorite vacation spot
for the rich and famous.

"She is someone who descends from great wealth and power,"
Paul Petruzzi, one of Johnson's lawyers, said in court.

Prosecutors said that Johnson, who has lived in Florida and
also goes by Angela Johnson, has operated a small collection of
businesses that offer psychic or spiritual services.

Prosecutors contended Johnson employed techniques commonly
used by fraudulent fortune-tellers who prey on vulnerable and
incapacitated people and cultivated a sense of dependence in the
elderly woman.

The unnamed woman was already prone to believe in the
presence of evil spirits, prosecutors said. They said that as
her dementia advanced, the woman attributed her symptoms to
demonic possession, which she hoped Johnson could alleviate.

To evade the Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny, Johnson
used an alias, directed the woman to wire payments to three
different bank accounts and withdrew large sums of cash to
conceal the money's source, prosecutors said.

She also accrued charges on a credit card held in the
elderly woman's name, spending $20,000 on entertainment and
jewelry alone, prosecutors said.